2 1 2 History of the English Landed Interest. 



burn of Ormiston, as well as farmers like Dawson and the 

 Culleys, soon began to imitate all that was good about Towns- 

 hend's and Bake well's systems. Lord Belhaven, Donaldson 

 and Maxwell/ north of the Tweed, Mortimer, Bradley, Hales, 

 Miller, Tull, Grew, Marshall and Young, south of it, were dif- 

 fusing their ideas throughout the United Kingdom by means 

 of the printing press. 



In 1725 The Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of 

 Agriculture in Scotland had so aroused the spirit of the North, 

 that laird after laird turned grieve and took to managing the 

 home farm, and tenant after tenant followed his landlord's 

 example. The result was that Scottish agriculture, hitherto 

 lagging behind English, now overtook and even outstripped it. 

 By the efforts of Blith, even the farming of Ireland had received 

 a stimulus towards the close of the seventeenth century ; 

 the fruits of which are recognisable in the institution of a 

 society there, which, judging from the similarity of its objects 

 and the date of its appearance, must have been modelled on 

 the lines of that of Scotland just mentioned. In fact, had 

 Pepys edited his Diary a few decades later, he would have 

 omitted the remark that "Our gentry are grown ignorant in 

 everything of good husbandry ; " though at the time the 

 words were written, the idleness displayed by many of the 

 wild bloods reinstated by Charles II. in their family estates 

 had fully justified the reproach. 



But it must not be supposed that landlords and farmers 

 were the only people who took an increased interest in hus- 

 bandry. As a writer of an agricultural biography puts it : 

 " The lawyer doffed his wig, the clergyman laid aside his 

 gown, and the sons of medicine neglected the jar and pestle, 

 in order to contribute a mite to further the good cause." 

 Reverend gentlemen like John Howlett urged the merits of 

 reclaiming wastes ; fellows of learned societies like John 

 Ellis wrote theses on cattle breeding ; doctors of medicine like 

 Sheldrake, Hill, and Home, expatiated on soils and crops. 

 Land-stewards like John Richards of Exeter, in 1730, pub- 



' R. Maxwell published the Transactions of the Society of Improvers in 

 Scotland^ and lectured on Husbandry in Edinburgh. 



